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As Thornton Academy’s Ryan Johnson warmed up on the Biddeford-Saco Country Club driving range, he took a moment to stare at the ground after each shot.

On the turf sat the team’s Foresight Sports GC3 Launch Monitor, spitting out data after each shot.

Many Maine golf teams have started using launch monitors over the past few years, raising the question: Can the information help high school players?

“I think it’s awesome, especially because we can’t be out on the course all day, every day,” Johnson said. “So being able to go to the range and get those yardages kind of locked in, ready for the round, is definitely helpful.”

Gray-New Gloucester’s Jason Maschino says a launch monitor’s instant feedback helps diagnose a golfer’s swing issues.

“I think if a player uses this often, they’re going to be able to get very good shot feedback,” Maschino said. “It’s just good to know so you can fix it on your next swing instead of just keep wondering what you’re doing wrong … you can see exactly what you did wrong and immediately adjust.”

Not everyone is convinced that launch monitors are beneficial for high schoolers.

Chris Whitney, a longtime coach at Cape Elizabeth, St. Dom’s and Morse, was a club pro in Florida and worked for TaylorMade, where he used the Trackman system with PGA Tour players such as Tiger Woods and Dustin Johnson. He said launch monitors can lead to bad habits for young golfers.

“Even the better golfers on some teams, it’s not like they’ve been fit for their clubs or anything like that,” Whitney said. “All I’ve ever wanted to do as a coach is just teach a kid consistency, contact, confidence, getting that stuff down. I think when you pull out a launch monitor, all of a sudden you have, ‘What’s my swing speed? What’s the ball speed?’ They don’t care about what the tool is actually for, and that’s getting your spin rates and your launch angles and that kind of stuff.”

Winthrop coach Lonney Steeves isn’t opposed to launch monitors, but he only brings them out a couple of times a season to dial in yardages.

“So they’ll swing harder to try to raise their swing speed,” Steeves said. “Now they’re hitting everything all over the planet, rather than a nice, smooth swing and putting it in play, which is what we want them to do. It can lead them to try to do things that aren’t helpful for them in high school golf. The ability to dial in numbers, or if a kid’s really got a bad hook or a bad slice, to be able to see the path, that stuff is good to use.”

Steeves did take the Ramblers to the Alexa Re Rancourt Golf Learning Center at the headquarters of Maine Golf in Freeport this preseason. The facility has a Top Tracer system, which is what networks use during PGA Tour telecasts.

DIALING IN SCORING CLUBS

During his recent warm-up session, Ryan Johnson was using the launch monitor’s ladder drill, in which the golfer must get the ball into an acceptable yardage range before moving to the next one. The drill starts at 30 yards and goes up to 100 yards, and the player has 15 shots to complete it.

Thornton Academy coach Jeff Camire said the Golden Trojans use launch monitors to learn to control their shots with short irons and wedges.

“We use it a lot more with our shots inside of 150 yards, … just to get the kids to get the accuracy and understand how to hit those intermediate or shorter shots instead of coming out here blasting drivers.” Camire said

By controlling their wedges, players are learning when the ball will spin and when it won’t.

“The spin, it’s different on different greens, but more spin can be helpful for a front pin to spin it back, or a short pin to roll one up there, and being able to control that can help in different scenarios,” Thornton’s Henry Litwinetz said.

From the Bushnell Launch Pro that Gray-New Gloucester acquired this offseason, Marcus Waldron-Little learned his shots go off line when his clubhead speed isn’t in the high 80s.

“We mapped his clubs out, and he was consistently at 88-89 miles per hour with his irons,” Gray-New Gloucester coach Wayne Martin said. “That tells us that when he was swinging 92-93, the ball was pulling to the left. When he was too slow, he was pushing it. Or he was slicing the ball.”

Some launch monitors also serve as simulators.

Windham High School decided to purchase a launch monitor a few years ago after weather made it difficult to get out on a course. The Eagles bought a GC3 from Bates College, but this offseason upgraded to the Garmin R50, which connects to any device with an HDMI port. Coach Adam Manzo plugs it into a projector in the middle school’s auxiliary gym, where a hitting bay is set up.

TRANSLATION TO THE COURSE

Steeves said the data from launch monitors benefited Winthrop last year, when the Ramblers tied for second at the Class C state championship.

“You could see their distances had improved,” Steeves said. “They were hitting it straighter, their impact was better, and stuff like that. So those kinds of things, you can measure stuff. It gives you a true measure of improvement.”

Ryan Johnson said that because of the data from the launch monitor, he’s more comfortable with his club selection when he’s playing a round.

“It definitely does help because, you know, I had a 100-yard shot right there, and I might have hit a different club that I didn’t know before,” Johnson said. “So going out there, using the launch monitor to my advantage is going to help on the course.”